I've been cooking beef for almost half a century and I thought that I was making a pretty good job of it, but last weekend I cooked the best beef I have ever done and it was down to 'Leith's Meat Bible'. It wasn't because I had suddenly found a recipe to top all the others – it was because this book doesn't just tell you ''what'' to do; it tells you why. Because of this I made some fairly minor adjustments to how I cooked the beef – and the results were amazing. It's the ultimate meat cookbook and unless you're vegetarian or vegan you should have one.
For another invaluable guide to techniques we can recommend [[Knife Skills Illustrated: A User's Manual by Peter Hertzmann]].
{{toptentext|list=Bookbag's Christmas Gift Recommendations 2010}} {{amazontext|amazon=0747590478}} {{waterstonestextamazonUStext|waterstonesamazon=68634220747590478}}